I’m fascinated by the economics of image sharing sites. They fill a fundamental need to share images across other platforms but they seem expensive to run and difficult to monetize.
Have there been successful image hosters that weren’t just spending money to capture users in order to sell out or eventually enshitten (imgur, giphy, imageshack)?
Shutterstock is selling prints so it will be interesting to see what they do with giphy.
I remember when Imgur started and they were really nice and seemed to be a low cost (I think only one employee) so they could host barebones without making the experience bad for users (ads, data mining, etc).
Have there been successful image hosters that weren’t just spending money to capture users in order to sell out or eventually enshitten (imgur, giphy, imageshack)?
Shutterstock is selling prints so it will be interesting to see what they do with giphy.
I remember when Imgur started and they were really nice and seemed to be a low cost (I think only one employee) so they could host barebones without making the experience bad for users (ads, data mining, etc).